Stray Thoughts

The alarm on his mobile phone gently buzzed beside Diwan’s pillow and his arm snaked out from beneath the quilt to kill it before it started ringing. He didn’t want to wake up his brother Mohan who had come home last evening. He quietly got out of the room, quickly poured some cold water on his face, and finished his morning ablutions. He changed into his shorts and singlet put on his sneakers and was running down the narrow mountain path to meet with his friends Kamal and Bhimraj who would be waiting at Kundan’s shop. It was 5.30 am and the skies had just about started to become pale behind the hills to the east. After a few stretches the three boys, or young men, since they had all turned 18, started slowly jogging up the rutted village road. It was turning cold as the weather had started changing after the rains, but the boys started sweating as they pounded the pot-holed tarmac. Every day for the last month these three boys had started their new schedule. Early morning and late eve...

It was now nearly a week that the rains had stopped, and the sun was shining brightly in a perfect blue sky with a few scattered puffs of white clouds. This year the rains had started late but once they had begun had continued steadily for the last two months. It was a welcome change from the last two years when the rains were not only late and sporadic but had come down so hard once or twice as to cause landslips in several places in our village. After debating for some time, I decided it would be safe to charge the solar cooker today, and after loading it with rice and dal, I went back to my reading. I was sitting on our veranda with my back to the sun and was deeply engrossed in an article on the work of Claudia Goldin, who had just been awarded the Nobel prize in the Economic Sciences, on my tablet, when I heard the clang of the metal gate, and a voice rang out ‘Uncleji Namaste’ . I looked in the direction and saw two young women or should I say girls coming down the stairs after c...

The period of Navaratri has just ended with Ramnavami. In the hills of Uttarakhand where I stay now, the period is marked by a period of fasting, praying and singing. Our valley resounded with prayers from all directions alternately reverberating and damped by the mountainsides and forests. On Ram Navami the Bhagwat Katha and Kirtans or prayers ended with the bhandara or the communal feast. Women wearing their best clothes with their children straggling behind them or skipping ahead, went up and down the road above our house, going to or returning from the Bhagwat further up. In the evening the sound of hudka , a local handheld drum, marked the jagar or prayers to the local god by the dancing shaman that went late into the night. Our participation in the ritual festivities was limited to having the puri, chole and halwa that our neighbour brought us. It was a dignified, peaceful and happy nine-day celebration of the new year here in our village. Elsewhere the news around the cel...

- Jashodhara and Abhijit The second wave of Covid suddenly overwhelmed the entire nation towards the end of the month of April 2021. It was not long since the Indian Prime Minister had declared victory over Covid at the World Economic Forum that the cases started to rise once again. While the first wave in 2020 had seen the peak of a little less than 1 lakh new cases daily, this year between mid-February and mid- April the rate of increase was far in excess: in fact, by early May 2021, more than 4 lakh new cases were being detected every day! The virus has mutated and is now much more infective than earlier. The second wave was first felt in Maharashtra but soon Delhi faced the brunt of the second wave. Around that time, we were planning to move our household to Mukteshwar in Nainital District, Uttarakhand. Almost everything had been packed, most furniture been disposed off and we were negotiating with the movers, when on the 19 th of April, lockdown was announced in Delhi. The infect...